High street brands have been accelerating the pace of fast fashion for years. Trends change overnight, repeating outfits has become a faux pas, and what happens when the trend goes out? The clothes are nothing short of a waste. Ending up in landfills and adding to the mountain of waste that already exists. It is said one man's waste is another man's treasure but when a basic necessity like clothes becomes a treasure, a gap must be bridged. Founded by Anshu Gupta in 1999, NGO Goonj works to bridge that gap. The NGO provides basic needs like clothes to the underprivileged but they don't believe in doing it as a charity or by compromising one's dignity.
In a conversation with NDTV, Anshu Gupta, Founder, Goonj talked about clothes being a development issue and said,
If you notice clothes are used in disaster relief. During floods, it's clothes that get collected in affected areas. And clothes are a commodity that one donates to charity. We thought that if clothes are a basic human need then why isn't anyone working on it? Why isn't it a developmental subject? To be honest, when we started, we didn't know anything about developmental issues. It's a simple thing that is grossly ignored.
But what motivated Mr Gupta to start Goonj is an even more interesting story. Being an aspiring journalist, Mr Gupta was in search of a story when he came across a rickshaw with something strange written behind it. Recalling the incident, he said,
I met a man called Habib Bhai. He is no more now. I saw his rickshaw and followed it for some distance. On his rickshaw was written "Dilli police ka lavaris lash uthane wala", meaning "someone who picks up abandoned dead bodies for Delhi police" and for every dead body he was paid Rs. 20 and given 2 meters of white cloth.
What was even more shocking was what Habib bhai's daughter told Mr Gupta, which really drove home the crisis India's poor face over something as basic as clothing.
His daughter told me that whenever she felt cold, she hugged a dead body and slept peacefully because a dead body doesn't toss and turn. I could not believe what I heard. I couldn't fathom this. One day I eventually realised that people aren't dying of cold. If cold kills people, even I would have died. If I survive and someone dies, it's not cold, it's a lack of clothing, recollected Mr Gupta.
Shaken by this experience, Mr Gupta quit his job and started NGO Goonj, to address the crucial gaps in urban and rural areas. The NGO works towards eliminating development issues faced in rural areas by using urban materials as a reward, especially clothes.
Cloth is a very important thing for sure and we became the first institution in the world that started talking about clothing as a developmental subject but we are using cloth, utensils, footwear, doors and windows anything which still has a life, and can be reused.
But to think that Goonj is just another NGO donating clothes to the underprivileged is not correct. It's this notion that Goonj is trying to change with their work by eliminating the words charity and donation.
Goonj believes when people give away their second-hand material, it is not a donation. One is simply discarding clothes they don't need anymore. The organisation channelises the clothes in rural areas where people still have the utility for them not as a charity, because Goonj believes the concept of charity hurts people's dignity. Talking about their work, Mr Gupta said,
That's when we came up with this model called cloth for work or dignity for work. Today, honestly speaking we are a hardcore rural development, water, sanitation and infrastructure institution. When discarded material reaches us, it goes through a rigorous process of elimination. That's because the problem with a donation is, that we give what we have not what other people need.
Through a very detailed process, with much care, the organisation matches the need of people in rural areas. The physical condition of the material is checked and turned into kits. These kits are then sent to various communities, slums, and villages. Elaborating on the workflow of Goonj, Mr Gupta said,
You can say there are three stakeholders or three steps. First is the collection of material which is the urban, under-utilised material. Material that people have discarded or aren't using anymore. Like I said earlier, it consists of cloth, utensils, footwear, door, window, wash basin, pipe fitting, and other items. The second part is a rigorous process of matching materials to the need. Let's consider footwear for the women who live in the mountains of Uttarakhand. It's common to imagine they would need footwear like slippers or sandal. But out there, they need sports shoes. So, with that kind of minute thinking, materials are converted into various family kits, disaster relief kits, cloth for work or dignity for work kits, school kits and menstruation hygiene kits.
Through a very detailed process, with much care, the organisation matches the need of people in rural areas. The physical condition of the material is checked and turned into kits. These kits are then sent to various communities, slums, and villages.
Millions of women across the world don't have access to hygiene products while menstruating. Sand, jute, ash or even cow dung are used as an alternative for sanitary napkins, putting women at grave risk, This is where Goonj made cloth, a solution and called it 'my pad'. Talking about the same, Mr Gupta said,
Anything which is cotton or semi-cotton, which is of no use for the larger part of the world, that comes to us is converted into 100 per cent bio-degradable, cheapest possible, a reusable sanitary pad which is now called 'my pad'. We don't even call it a sanitary pad. We say it's a better piece of cloth.
Nibha Jha, one of the employees of Goonj was never taught about the importance of menstrual hygiene but today, hygiene is an integral part of her life. She said,
I have now started taking care of my hygiene after coming to Goonj. Our mothers taught us how to reuse but never told us about hygiene. We never spoke about this topic in the village. This was a hidden subject. Whenever a girl went through her menstrual cycle, she was asked to hide it from everyone. But here, cleanliness and hygiene are much talked about and focused on. So, now when I go back to my village, I am asked if I am working as a nurse.
While the organisation helps rural areas with their needs, Goonj also ensures that no person with capabilities, who wants to work is left behind. 70 per cent of Goonj's team comprises of talented women who never got a chance for employment. Today, these women have carved a path to financial independence and self-sufficiency. Nazia, another employee of Goonj said,
The smallest piece of fabric - that can still be used or reused, and cotton are brought here. Large fabric pieces are cut into smaller pieces and sent to the villages for the people there who are in need.
Talking about how working for Goonj has made her financially independent and made her life better, Nibha Jha said,
I could never imagine sending my children to GD Goenka school. But now I'm able to send them there and this is a very big thing for me. We are paid for all the work we do here. When I watch the videos or go out in the field, I see and feel happy and content with the work I do.
Reusing clothes, giving employment opportunities to women, and bridging a gap between the urban and the rural. That's why Goonj's effort is a perfect example of clothes with a conscience. While signing off, Mr Gupta said,
I would say this is one step ahead of recycling. What is important to consider in this era of climate change, where we create so much waste that it ends up in landfills - the size of which has also grown so much that it's taking away much needed land, is that we must optimally utilise everything.
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